


The Gentler Sex

by IncurableNecromantic



Category: Original Work
Genre: At Long Last, F/F, fem!Blutrunst, mutilation of children's bodies, y'know the usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:37:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6357361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncurableNecromantic/pseuds/IncurableNecromantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eudora Barnes, an FBI agent, asks Hera Bethlehem, a folklorist and forensic semotician, to share her insight on a crop of appalling child-murders.  She gets that, and then some.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gentler Sex

The consultant has restless fingers.

They’re long, very slender, the nails short and clean. The middle finger of one hand is circled by a beautiful but tarnished silver ring with a carved ivory focus. It looks like a tooth. 

Eudora watches as the consultant runs her fingers over and over the arm of her chair.

Her name is Hera Bethlehem. Eudora has known her for almost a twenty minutes. She’s never seen such a fascinating person before.

Hera’s eyes are fixed on the folder in her lap, and the picture that stares up at her.

“I can tell you this much. You must not go looking for a savage,” Hera says. Her voice is as cool as silk, pure and clean, a little resonant. 

She used to sing. Eudora recognized the name before she even knocked on the door.

Eudora smiles at her. "No?“

“No. You won’t find him in a cave, crouched on all fours, scraps of child flesh dangling from his bearded chin.”

Oh, good heavens. She’s a vixen, talking like that. "Now, why would you say that?“

“Compare this to Bedburg,” her host says, looking up at Eudora. Her eyes are pale and nearly colorless behind her mask. Eudora can see why children would shy away from this big, strange house set back in the woods, with this staring-eyed, masked woman haunting its halls.

That’s just as well. The path Eudora’s thoughts have taken, the longer she sits with this exquisite untombed Madeline Usher, are not suitable for children anyway.

“Bedburg?” Eudora asks.

Hera nods. "Werewolf behavior. The most barren and stupid animal savagery. Disemboweled livestock. Human limbs scattered in the field. Fetuses ripped from mother’s wombs and eaten warm. Blood.”

Eurdora crossed her ankles and squeezes her thighs.

“And at the end of it?” Hera murmurs. “Nothing much. Appetite. Unimaginative appetite at that.”

Eudora gave her a smile. “What would you consider an imaginative appetite, ma’am?”

Hera looks at her for a moment, before her gaze slides away. Across the room, a dark, dismal landscape hangs above the piano. Eudora follows her gaze to it. The scene is a New England wood, Eudora is fairly sure, but she cannot place the artist. It is an empty, desolate vista, all gnarled, agonized trees and scratching branches. A punishment for suicides. 

Hera turns to face her. The light slants across her forehead and her mask catches it, false porcelain flesh over – what? No one knows. Her hair is dark grey, twisted in an elegant French knot on the back of her head, and the gold light of the standing lamp makes it look darker. 

She looks as bloodless as a corpse. As clean and pretty as a holy icon.

“An imaginative appetite?” Hera muses aloud. “I like something that expresses itself in sublimation. History. Euphemism. Something a little more complex. And Bedburg gore is so straightforward. No mystery. It’s even a bit masculine. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I always thought women were the ones obsessed with blood,” Eudora replies, lacing her fingers across her belly. "We see so much more of it than men do. And I know a lot of girls who grew up with a positive obsession with Elizabeth Bathory.“

Hera’s tilts her head very slightly to the side and lets out a soft laugh. Eudora had never seen someone so completely kissable. 

"Countess Bathory did not bathe in blood. That is a common misconception, as I think you must know, Ms. Barnes.” She blinks and clears her throat. “Pardon me. Agent Barnes.”

Eudora grins at her. "Actually, Ms. is just fine. Or even ‘miss.’“

Hera drops her eyes and turns to another photograph. "Miss Barnes.”

“Then how should we understand Countess Bathory, if the truth is not quite so…exhibitionistic?”

“She is also not my idea of an euphemistic killer. An extremely intelligent and privileged woman with a pronounced sadistic streak treated other human beings like playthings for the sake of cruel amusement.”

“Thrilling stuff,” Eudora drawls.

“Don’t disappoint me, Miss Barnes,” Hera replies. “That is a very simple story. The blood is not the significant thing. It’s all about power, and the least fascinating kind of power, at that. I can certainly find something juicier for you. I am no psychologist, but this, at least, had potential.”

“You’re no psychologist, but you do a pretty good job in a pinch,” Eudora smiles. "That’s why I’m here, about this murder. What, would you say, is the significant thing here?“

Hera glances down at the file in her lap and pages slowly through the pictures. They both know what it is: a child’s body, buried up to the hips in the dirt. Its spine is rigid, planted perpendicularly to the earth with its arms aloft and posed like branches. Its mouth is open – sans tongue and teeth – and the tips of its fingers have been carefully charred black. It is empty inside, completely disemboweled and washed clean.

There’s a mason jar in the stomach cavity. They found a burnt out candle inside.

Hera doesn’t say a word, tilting her head back and examining the photograph carefully. Eudora waits her out, sitting across from her. The parlor is a small, dark room, full of rotting books and understated antiques. Somewhere a clock is ticking, meting out long, dense seconds. Out of the corner of her eye, Eudora thinks she sees something move past the dark window, but the only feature on the wall is the huge painting of the forest. 

She watches it closely for a few seconds. It doesn’t move. 

Foolish to have expected it to.

Hera hums quietly.

"What is it about this scene that has brought you here?” she asks.

Eudora turns to look at her. One of her hands has drifted over the side of her chair and is distractedly petting the head of a mangy wolf hound. She is watching Eudora with still, solemn eyes.

"The symbolism is striking,” Eudora says. "Specific. Ritualistic. I want to speak with someone who knows these symbols.“

Hera tapped the picture with her finger. "The body was planted, obviously to mimic a tree. You have a sprout, here.”

“And the mouth?”

“What do you think?”

“Aesthetic, perhaps.”

Hera smiles. "Well, trees certainly don’t have teeth. Or tongues. What about the rest of the mutilation?“

"I’m here to interview you, ma'am,” Eudora reminds her. Hera blinks slowly.

“Miss,” Hera says softly, eyes back on the photograph. 

“Miss,” Eudora corrects herself, smiling.

“The mutilation…” Hera hums. It’s musical, purring alto murmurs rippling through the air. Hera runs her fingers over her the red painted lips of her mask. It’s strange, unconscious and innocently sensual, and seeing it as a reaction to the photographs is something almost hideous. Eudora stares and feels rather breathless.

Oh dear. Oh, dear.

Hera speaks in a dreamy tone. "A disfigured face is always interesting. What’s wrong with it?“

"We think it was boiled after death.”

“Just the face.”

“Yes.”

“Well then,” Hera says. "Ruined face, burnt appendages – you’re looking for a hot-blooded man.“

Eudora laughs. "Some do like it hot, at that. Why do you say a man, if the lack of blood is supposedly feminine?”

Hera gives her a strange look. It takes Eudora a moment to realize what’s wrong with it, and when she does, something cold and soft curls around the base of her spine. 

Hera’s eyes are open very slightly too wide.

“A woman wouldn’t be likely to handle a child so very cruelly,” Hera replies. "Would she?“

Eudora swallows around a dry mouth.

“The right kind of woman might be capable of anything,” she says.

Hera is tapping all the photos together and slipping them into the folder once more. She stops, staring at Eudora with her cold eyes.

“Quite right,” she agrees. Her voice is as soft as snow. “Then we’d better stay on our toes, hadn’t we?”

Eudora smiles, curling her lips very slowly. Hera blinks at the gesture and turns her attention back to the folder, covering it up with a fastidious little gesture of her long, slender hands. 

"I wonder how much of the area you searched, after you found this little monument?” Hera asks.

“The usual radius.”

“You might think to look a little further afield,” Hera shrugs. "The tree imagery is so specific, and very carefully cultivated. You have an avid gardener on your hands, if you understand my meaning.“

"You think there’s an orchard.”

Hera glances at her through her eyelashes. "One tree does not make a forest, after all.“

Eudora nods. "You raise a good point.”

Hera leans forward to offer her the file. “Happy hunting.”

Eudora takes the folder and examines her. Strange, haunted woman. She’s heard the stories, of course – the unexplained disfigurement, the macabre studies, the inhuman coldness and collectedness when she looks at the worst bodies they can bring her. 

The way she breathes in when she goes to the morgue.

It’s not the way a good psychologist would behave, and even worse for a person who happens to be more of a folklorist and forensic semiotician. They’ve caught killers using her insight, but no one likes to come visit her. She’s too much like the killers themselves.

Eudora smiles at her. There’s something here, in the artificial widening of those beautiful, pale eyes. Hera is drawing her gently away from something, she knows.

She’s got to know what that is.

“Thank you.” Eudora sits forward a little. “Miss Bethlehem…”

“Yes?”

“There are quite a few more cases that I believe could use your attention. Would you mind if I brought them to you?”

Hera blinks. “Of course not. That is what I am here for, Miss Barnes. I am entirely at your disposal.”

Eudora gives her a smile. “Thank you. When is convenient?”

“Immediately,” Hera says. “I’m available at any time.”

“Dinner?”

Hera glances at her. “…yes. Yes. Tomorrow? I would be happy to have you for dinner.”

“I’ll bring a bottle of wine,” Eudora says.

Hera gives her a slightly surprised glance.

“Or, perhaps two,” Eudora grins. Perhaps Countess Bathory never bathed in blood, but she thinks that Miss Bethlehem with a bloody glass might be a sight to see. “Red?”

“We’re going to be wonderful colleagues, Miss Barnes,” Hera hums. “I can already tell.”

Deep in the house, the clock rings five. Hera put her head to the side. "My manners have been very bad today. May I pour you a cup of tea, Miss Barnes?”

“Thanks very much, but I think I’d better get on my way,” Eudora said, getting to her feet. Her host rose as well, her long, slender body unfolding from the chair. "Thank you, Miss Bethlehem, for your help.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Hera says. “Let’s see what mischief we can make, first. I’ll walk you out.”

Hera’s gardener glowers at Eudora on the walk down the long path. Eudora gives the old woman a big smile and walks away.

Just twenty six hours to wait.


End file.
